Senior Backend Design Automation Engineer — New Process Node Enablement

Altera Semiconductor•San Jose, CA

10d•Onsite

About The Position

Altera is seeking a Senior Backend Design Automation Engineer to join their Design Automation group. This role is responsible for owning and bringing up the design environment for new process nodes, ensuring its readiness for production use, and providing ongoing project support. The engineer will work directly with design team leads, domain representatives, and technology enablement partners to understand the demands of new process nodes on Back-End flows. They will define, build, deploy, and support the methodology that enables designers to achieve sign-off. The core of the job involves new node bring-up and project support, turning raw foundry deliveries (PDK, standard-cell library, technology collateral) into a working design environment. This includes intercepting PDK and Foundation IP, updating flow scripts and tool configurations, and building and running regression test cases. The role is part of a modernization effort to consolidate Back-End construction, verification, and analysis into a unified flow environment with managed workspaces and released collateral. A senior engineer will have the opportunity to shape how future process nodes are enabled and will collaborate with global Design Automation teams and engineering experts. The team is actively applying AI and ML to design automation flows, including runtime and resource prediction, automated failure summarization, and knowledge capture from debug. AI-assisted development tools are also in use, and the role offers the chance to integrate these techniques into Back-End flow development and process node bring-up.

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
8+ years of professional experience in Back-End IC design or design automation.
8+ years of professional experience owning, developing, or supporting production Back-End design flows, including areas such as PDK installation and setup, custom design construction, circuit simulation, cell characterization, physical verification (DRC/LVS), RC extraction, static timing analysis, IR/EM, or power analysis.
8+ years of professional experience working with semiconductor process technologies, including direct experience bringing up or migrating design environments to new process nodes or technology releases, including PDK, standard-cell library, and technology collateral integration and qualification.
8+ years of professional experience using industry-standard Back-End EDA tools, including tools from Synopsys, Cadence, and/or Siemens.
8+ years of professional experience developing and maintaining software and automation for semiconductor design flows, including Python, Tcl, shell scripting, or similar languages, with a strong understanding of algorithms and data structures and experience releasing production flows through a formal process.
8+ years of professional experience working in Linux/UNIX environments with distributed compute infrastructure and job schedulers, including efficiently executing and managing large-scale design and regression workloads.
8+ years of professional experience partnering directly with IC design teams as internal customers, including gathering methodology requirements, deploying production flows, supporting users through tape-out, and developing technical training and documentation.
8+ years of professional experience driving technical alignment across geographically distributed engineering teams, including coordinating technical decisions and execution across multiple sites and time zones.
8+ years of professional experience communicating complex technical concepts to engineering audiences, including presenting Design Automation methodology proposals, technical recommendations, and project status to design leads and senior engineering management.
Applicants must be eligible for any required U.S. export authorizations.

Nice To Haves

AI and ML techniques applied to design automation flows.
AI-assisted development tools.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end bring-up, qualification, and production deployment of Back-End design automation flows for new process nodes and technology releases.
Partner directly with design leads, domain representatives, and technology enablement teams to understand new-node requirements and translate them into scalable Back-End methodologies and flows.
Integrate and qualify new PDKs, standard-cell libraries, Foundation IP, and other technology collateral, updating EDA tool configurations, flow scripts, and supporting infrastructure as required.
Develop, maintain, and execute comprehensive regression test cases to validate Back-End flow functionality, identify failures, and drive issues through resolution prior to production release.
Support Back-End design teams through production use and tape-out, including flow deployment, debug, user support, training, documentation, and methodology improvements.
Contribute to the modernization and consolidation of Back-End construction, verification, and analysis flows within a unified design automation environment with managed workspaces and released collateral.
Collaborate with globally distributed Design Automation teams and engineering experts to drive technical alignment, resolve cross-functional issues, and enable new process nodes across multiple projects.
Evaluate and apply AI/ML techniques and AI-assisted development tools to improve flow development, regression analysis, debug, runtime/resource optimization, and knowledge capture.